Space Symposium

The Space Symposium is the annual aerospace industry conference organised by the Space Foundation in Colorado Springs. On 13 April 2026, it was the venue where Senator Jerry Moran publicly rejected the White House FY2027 NASA budget and announced a scheduled accountability hearing for NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, the most significant political development in US space policy since the administration took office. The choice of venue was deliberate: the symposium concentrates the senior leadership of NASA, the Department of Defense space enterprise, and the prime contractor community in a single room, maximising the audience for a political signal.

The Space Foundation has run the event for more than 40 years. Attendance regularly exceeds 15,000 and the speaker roster typically includes the NASA Administrator, senior Air Force and Space Force commanders, and the CEOs of all Major US aerospace primes. It is the single largest annual gathering of the US space community and functions as the informal budget-season kickoff: Major policy positions are announced here specifically because the audience is the most concentrated group of space stakeholders assembled all year.

The symposium is not a policy-making body, but its utility as a venue makes it a reliable indicator of which political actors want to reach the space industry directly. Moran's statement carries different weight here than a Senate floor statement because the audience writes the contracts that will be affected.